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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday October 11 2017, @10:38AM   Printer-friendly
from the ransomware dept.

A computer virus has infected the cockpits of America's Predator and Reaper drones, logging pilots' every keystroke as they remotely fly missions over Afghanistan and other war zones.

The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military's Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech's computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the US military's most important weapons system.

"We keep wiping it off, and it keeps coming back," says a source familiar with the network infection, one of three that told Danger Room about the virus. "We think it's benign. But we just don't know."

The NSA was too busy reading your little sister's diary to fix it.


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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:03PM (1 child)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:03PM (#580700) Journal

    "Insultant." How apropos.

    I'm stealing that one.

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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:20PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 11 2017, @07:20PM (#580719) Journal

    I did not come up with it.

    In early 1987, as a Mac developer (Timbuktu), my employer received pre-release software. The pre-release MultiFinder [wikipedia.org] (which was a fantastic Mac innovation) had an About box featuring a sound track and scrolling credits. One of the credits was "fashion insultant". That is where I latched onto the term.

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